Best of the Best Book Club: Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley

The Coronado Public Library’s Best of the Best Book Club meets regularly on the fourth Wednesday of each month to discuss books that have won major awards. Receive reminder emails about our meeting by registering. Registration is not required.

For our September meeting, we will discuss the 2022 Printz Medal winner Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley, a groundbreaking young adult thriller about a Native teen who must root out the corruption in her community.

About Firekeeper’s Daughter: 

Eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in, both in her hometown and on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. She dreams of a fresh start at college, but when family tragedy strikes, Daunis puts her future on hold to look after her fragile mother. The only bright spot is meeting Jamie, the charming new recruit on her brother Levi’s hockey team.

Yet even as Daunis falls for Jamie, she senses the dashing hockey star is hiding something. Everything comes to light when Daunis witnesses a shocking murder, thrusting her into an FBI investigation of a lethal new drug.

Reluctantly, Daunis agrees to go undercover, drawing on her knowledge of chemistry and Ojibwe traditional medicine to track down the source. But the search for truth is more complicated than Daunis imagined, exposing secrets and old scars. At the same time, she grows concerned with an investigation that seems more focused on punishing the offenders than protecting the victims.

Now, as the deceptions—and deaths—keep growing, Daunis must learn what it means to be a strong Anishinaabe kwe (Ojibwe woman) and how far she’ll go for her community, even if it tears apart the only world she’s ever known.